Bombshell: MSM Has Been Fudging Numbers to Trick Nielsen Ratings

Several liberal media outlets have been busted using unethical tricks to improve the Nielsen ratings for some of their lagging programs.

The trick involves purposefully misspelling a program’s name on days where ratings are expected to be lower than usual. This causes Nielsen’s automated system to register that day’s episode as an entirely separate show, meaning that the program’s poor ratings for that day wind up not being included in the actual program’s weekly ratings.

On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, for instance, NBC changed the spelling of “NBC Nightly News” to “NBC Nitely News.”

“The retitling of ‘NBC Nightly News’ fooled Nielsen’s automated system, which listed ‘Nitely’ as a separate show,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Hiding the May 26 program from Nielsen dramatically improved the show’s average viewership that week. Instead of falling further behind first-place rival ‘ABC World News Tonight,’ NBC news narrowed the gap.”

This seedy technique has been used by NBC at least 14 times since the start of the current TV season. The same applies for CBS, which has employed the trick 12 times, and ABC, which has used it 7 times.

Apparently, it’s commonplace for the liberal media to create fake ratings to complement their fake news. It’s no wonder so few Americans take them seriously anymore.

Nielsen has been aware of this trick for years but has chosen to willingly allow it to be used.

“It’s a little bit of gamesmanship,” said Bill Carroll, a veteran TV industry consultant. “It’s a practice that happens with a wink and a nod.”

What’s changed is the frequency.

“Networks never used to do this,” added Billie Gold, director of programming at ad giant Dentsu Inc., noting that what used to be a rarity is now customary; which is why Nielsen is finally taking action.

The ratings agency is slated to meet with major liberal media networks sometime soon “to discuss whether the practice of mis-titling shows should continue,” sources confirmed to the New York Post.

But what is there to even discuss? This trick is misleading and wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated, period.

What do you think about the liberal media’s pathetic attempts to boost its ratings?